Microsoft evaluating Yahoo offer: source — SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp is evaluating its offer for Yahoo Inc in light of worsening market conditions, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday. — Microsoft has been repeatedly trying to engage Yahoo's board in discussions, this person said.

Microsoft, Yahoo Hold Meetings — Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo Inc. senior executives met this week to discuss Microsoft's proposal to acquire the Internet company but failed to resolve any of their differences, according to people familiar with the matter. — The meeting, which took place …

Microsoft losing patience with Yahoo? — Microsoft is evaluating its Yahoo acquisition bid under the theory that the Internet company may have lost value since the $44.6 billion offer was made, according to a Reuters report this afternoon, citing an anonymous source.

Source: Google To Launch BigTable As Web Service — Google may be releasing BigTable, its internal database system, as a web service to compete with Amazon SimpleDB, according to a source with knowledge of the launch. There are also rumors that press is being pre-briefed on the product, although we haven't been contacted by Google.

Gates: Windows 7 may come ‘in the next year’ — MIAMI—Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Friday indicated that Windows 7, the next major version of Windows, could come within the next year, far ahead of the development schedule previously indicated by the software maker.

The Phorm “Webwise” System — Last week I spent several hours at Phorm learning how their advertising system works — this is the system that is to be deployed by the UK's largest ISPs to pick apart your web browsing activities to try and determine what interests you.

Couple Sues Google Over “Street View” — Pittsburgh pair claims privacy invaded by posting of home photo — A Pittsburgh couple is suing Google for invasion of privacy, claiming that the web giant's popular “Street View” mapping feature has made a photo of their home available to online searchers.

“Free” is Killing Us—Blame The VCs — I believe it should be possible to start a small business and to have a small number of profitable customers, and to earn a living. From there, it should be possible to work hard, and to grow your business into something substantial.

Google Talk, Labs Edition — There's a new flavor of Google Talk: the Labs edition, a desktop client that looks very similar to the Google Talk gadget and has most of its features. The application doesn't support voice chat or file transfer, but it has some new features …

Blogonomics: Valleywag Pay Slashed — Jordan Golson can't be happy: Nick Denton has cut the amount of money he gets per thousand pageviews to $6.50 from $9.75. That's a 33% pay cut, on a per-pageview basis. What about on an absolute basis? — Well, the pageview rate is set on the basis of the previous quarter's pageviews.

Huge Microsoft patent loss is a partial win — A federal jury in San Diego this afternoon awarded $367.4 million to Alcatel-Lucent in a patent dispute with Microsoft. It ranks among the biggest patent verdicts in U.S. history, but it could have been worse: Alcatel-Lucent had been seeking $1.75 billion.

Breaking the Techmeme Habit — Techmeme is a great place to stay up-to-date with the current tech news in the blogosphere, showing the most popular and current news items of the day. The site also offers a Leaderboard section which features the current top 100 bloggers and news sources.

Companies struggle as Safari pops up on networks — Network administrators are complaining that Apple's recent decision to offer users its Safari Web browser as part of an iTunes and QuickTime update has made their lives harder as they struggle to remove the software from PCs on their networks.

Census Bureau decides it can't count on computers — This is just pitiful. As a taxpayer, and especially as a Silicon Valley taxpayer, it rankles me no end to see yet another government technology initiative botched up because the people in charge are out of their depth.